Meth, cannabis seized in MIQ smuggling busts

A friend of a guest at a managed isolation hotel in Auckland tried to smuggle cannabis into the facility by taping it to a tennis ball and chucking it over the wire.

Another returnee escaped police sanction despite receiving a courier package containing a gram of methamphetamine and a glass pipe.

They were among 29 instances of drug smuggling, or use, caught by officials at New Zealand’s network of managed isolation and quarantine facilities.

Details of the bungled smuggling efforts, ranging from casual to crafty, came to light following an Official Information Act request by Stuff to police.

Nine of the 29 attempts happened at the Ramada Suites in central Auckland, a higher security facility used to house 501 deportees from Australia sent packing because of their past criminal conduct.

Police took a light-handed approach in all cases, destroying the items but taking no further action beyond issuing a warning.

Most of the busts centred on cannabis but two involved meth and another is believed to have centred on synthetics.

The tennis ball incident unfolded at a Grand Mercure isolation hotel, in either Auckland or Wellington – the police logs specify only the hotel name, not the location.

Defence Force staff phoned police after someone threw a tennis ball onto the smokers’ deck with a bag of cannabis attached to it, a method of drug delivery sometimes attempted around the perimeter of Kiwi prisons. Police made inquiries, destroyed the cannabis and took no further action.

About a month earlier, a courier package addressed to a male guest was delivered to staff at Auckland’s Pullman Hotel by an ‘‘unknown female,’’ according to a police summary of the incident.

The man denied knowing the package contained class A illicit drugs and instead said he thought it was merely a phone.

‘‘The female has mysteriously returned to get the package back but when told to wait she ran away, likely to a vehicle outside the range of site cameras.’’

Police could not prove beyond reasonable doubt the man was to take possession of the meth and he continued to maintain innocence, so no further action was taken besides seizing and destroying the drugs.

The nine drug-smuggling attempts at Ramada all involved small quantities of cannabis, and paraphernalia in some instances.

In three of the smuggling attempts at the Ramada, the cannabis was concealed inside bottles of shampoo or conditioner, while in another a gram of the plant was hidden inside chocolate biscuits.